Any player*
This is exactly why it’s a problem because it’s not just the path of least resistance, but in comparison it’s the path with no resistance.
The rewards should be balanced across all forms if they are going to interact with other content. I don’t care if they increased the rewards to Hero track as long as it’s congruent.
Even if this is correct, it supports my point, being that M+ players do not care about delvers, which was the comment I was responding to.
And the ad hominem begins…
While a lot of players will choose the path of least resistance, not everyone will. But that also has nothing to do with the point you quoted.
There is only so much you can do to make content that’s far below a player’s skill level to be enjoyable. I’ll wind up with all portals before the season ends, I don’t get much out of keys below a +8 in terms of enjoyment, they’re just a necessary evil if I need gear or IO out of them.
Yet unless Blizzard mails gear to a player like me based on my past history with the system, I’ll have to start the first season of each expansion working through content that is fairly boring, but I won’t have the health/throughput to succeed in higher nor the IO to even get into those groups in the first place.
There probably are some things Blizzard could do to improve this situation, but it will never go away short of them providing free gear to players in similar positions as mine.
Which is regressive thinking because rewards can never ‘be balanced’. Denying Delve players the chance at Heroic track level gear for the sake of M+ is not fixing M+ or how bad M+ players are.
Your statistics are facts to back up an opinion. Weather something is god/bad, easy/hard, too rewarding/not rewarding enough, those are all opinions. They can be backed up by facts, but at the end of the day it’s using facts to support your opinion. Opinions are how something seems or feels and are not measurable. Facts can be proven true or false by some concrete metric. The density of this is X. The measurement of this is X. This rock is hard is not a good description. This rock has a density of X, would be a fact.
Clearly, we should have best in slot gear available as drop at level 1.
Rewards can never be balanced around, so what’s the issue?
If someone is going to keys at all we can assume they at least want to be there and learn. People naturally want to succeed. Perhasp the issue is Blizz fails at providing a good learning experience for these players in M+.
A Mythic or Heroic raider will also have higher ilvl and will wish to skip the +6 but that doesn’t make them any more fit for the high keys either. They too should spend time learning in lower keys before moving on. So why single out Delves? I could only assume it’s because we culturally assume raiding run dungeons or find it easier to blame the new system for a problem inherent to M+.
Just here to agree that I have no interest in doing M+, and would like to continue living my delve existence lol.
And M+ pug players would still be bad. Doesn’t fix the issue with M+ or the mindset of M+ pug players when they could simply join a guild.
Then why can’t Delve players have their Heroic Track endgame then, Mr. Gatekeeper?
Because rewards CAN be balanced around, and they should be.
They never have been. What are you on about?
They have been, rewards largely follow this paradigm: Harder content = better rewards.
No, they haven’t. M+ proves that. Talk about a welfare gear system when it first came out. It’s STILL over-rewarding.
Yes, m+ bucked the trend. And there’s so much repositioning m+ rewards back n forth.
So before you whine about Delves, sort out M+ first, yeah?
Sure, but that is only the case if you’re engaged with the content. At the risk of seeming braggadocious (that’s not really my intent), I don’t really have to pay attention in keys where delves overlap the gear rewards. But if my character lacks the gear to succeed in keys I am engaged and/or I need the IO to get into groups/attract players to my keys, I still need to run those unengaging levels. It’s basically just a chore until I get the gear and/or score to be able to get into the levels I will actually enjoy.
I’m not “blaming” the new system because it’s new by any stretch. It’s that the level of mechanical skill and the attributes required to get the gear from delves is much lower than raids.
The style of mechanics in raid are similar to those in dungeons, meaning a successful raider will have a basic understanding of those kind of mechanics. There are certainly dungeon-specific mechanics that won’t be obvious the first time a raider sees, but for 80 - 90% of the mechanics, the counterplay of the mechanic is explained through visual cues that look the same as they see in raid. Additionally, raiders will be used to performance-based checks that result in wipes if not met.
With delves, players can tag each mob, let Brann get aggro, then watch from a distance. They never have to learn the mechanics. Many of the mechanic types that are in raids and dungeons aren’t present at all. I am not aware of any enrage timer for any enemy, so players can just outlast the mobs even if it takes 10 minutes per pull.
Of course you are correct that raiders should spend time in lower keys to learn the fights before jumping into the higher keys. If they don’t, there will likely be deaths and possibly even wipes caused by their ignorance of the dungeon. But a significant portion of mechanics will can be figured out on the fly from a player used to adjusting quickly to a raid mechanic. And even when a wipe does occur, they will be used to having to push numbers while doing mechanics to possibly make up the lost time.
So no, my comments directed toward delves truly have nothing to do with them being new. It’s that the skill expression required to obtain the gear in delves is far lower and significantly different than what they will see in M+. While heroic/mythic raid requires far higher levels of execution with similar-appearing mechanics in many cases.
They should always aim to balance them even if they are not perfectly balanced. Right now it’s not even close and that’s the problem.
Yet we still have people who think the world is flat. Regardless of the facts.
Raiding is very different to dungeons. While in both systems you are expected to go in knowing the fight in a raid it’s socially acceptable to wipe and try again. A raid lead will have a conversation how the party can do better next time. A dungeon however, you cannot. There is little room for “oops, my bad” you have to go in with your 110% or risk the wrath of a pug.
I’m not opposed to the idea that Delves offer too much reward for its difficulties I just think M+ participation at lower keys and Delve rewards are separate conversations.
For all we know Blizz is looking at placing the hero gear in T15s instead of T8. That approach alone might help a delver get into a mechanics based mindset like a raider.
That’s not a fair comparison. There are absolutely raid leaders who will kick someone who screws up a mechanic just once. And there are M+ leaders who will take the time to explain something if someone screws up a mechanic. A larger percentage of keys are PUGs than heroic/mythic raids, so I’m certain the rage approach is more common in keys. But that’s more to do with PUG versus premade rather than M+ versus raid.
But even taking a step back, my response was never saying that raids and dungeons are identical. Just that when comparing raids to delves, raid is much closer to dungeons in terms of the kinds of skill expression that exists. You can’t just outlast every pull with an NPC companion doing all the work in raid like you can in a delve.
For example, outside of being made aware of needing to target the tree on the first boss and someone marking the proper add on the second, every fight in mists this season uses mechanics you’ll find in raid with the same strategy of counterplay. A successful heroic raider who simply pays attention to the swirlies, arrows, and avoids an add fixating on them will be good for 90% of the dungeon mechanics. Outside of dodging swirlies, are any of the other mechanics present in delves?
I’m not worried with the participation in lower keys directly. It’s with just how much easier it is to get gear out of delves relative to both the time and difficulty when compared to low keys. If a player chooses to delve for gear because it makes more sense for their schedule or they just want something different, that’s cool. It shouldn’t be because the alternative requires a group with some idea what they’re doing, each dungeon takes 3x as long, and your loot chance drops from 100% to 40%. That difference is just too stark.
Those are outliers to the rule and you know that.